


Notes to This Tardiest Explorer

by Mira



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-07
Updated: 2006-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-16 22:28:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mira/pseuds/Mira





	Notes to This Tardiest Explorer

Much of this story was worked out on the ferry [Mendocino](http://goldengateferry.org/researchlibrary/photos.php) as I went to and from San Francisco while I thought about what might happen if the Ancients refused to leave the city of Atlantis. For visual and naming inspiration, I found some especially useful sites. First, Greentracks' Amazon River Expeditions [link no longer valid], especially this lovely photograph:

  


And this is how I envisioned the _Ghedun Angel_ :

  


I spent a long time playing on the [China Odyssey Destinations](http://www.chinaodysseytours.com/destinations/index.html) site, combining different river tours into Rodney and Teyla's journey. This is actually the Potala Palace in Tibet, but I imagined it as Rodney's home in Kampang:

  


and this is a lake in Tibet, but I think it's also where Rodney and Teyla first glimpsed Kampang from the _Ghedun Angel_ :

  


Finally, all Canadians and _due South_ fans will recognize the title, but for the rest of us, it's from the wonderful Stan Rogers' song Northwest Passage:

Watching cities rise before me, then behind me sink again  
This tardiest explorer, driving hard across the plain.  
And through the night, behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west  
I think upon Mackenzie, David Thompson and the rest  
Who cracked the mountain ramparts and did show a path for me  
To race the roaring Fraser to the sea.  
How then am I so different from the first men through this way?  
Like them, I left a settled life, I threw it all away.  
To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men  
To find there but the road back home again.

Back to [This Tardiest Explorer](http://archiveofourown.org/works/170045).

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